Our time in v. smelly Rotorua!!

Well we left Auckland and our next stop was Rotorua! Rotorua is a small town famous for its volcanoes and for being a hub for where Maori descendants live. The smell of the sulpher from the volcanoes was unbelievably strong and slightly took you back on arrival! All I can compare it to is probably the thought of gone off egg and that about ten times over, and you will nearly arrive at the smell of Rotorua - lol! Despite the smell though, activities in Rotorua well made up for it! We had one full day in Rotorua so we packed in as many activities as possible. In the morning, Liz & I headed over to N. Zealand's famous mud baths! It was such a bizzare experience to bathe in mud - especially on your feet, as it felt like you were treading on slime or something! Well weird! Anyway...the mud is meant to be really good for your skin...so hopefully we should be looking radiant from it all now. The cost of beauty - lol! The mud though had a really strong sulpher smell to it, which I can still smell on me now after numerous showers - so I'm really hoping it goes soon. A sulpher fragrance is really not v. attractive! The mud baths looked out onto the rest of a volcanic reserve with steam sizzling out everywhere from the thermal pools! All I can really compare it to is something perhaps out of Jurassic Park - was kind of expecting a dinasour to pop out at any point - lol!

In the afternoon we all headed over to a Maori thermal village where we saw a really brilliant cultural performance and had a tour around the area. In the show, we saw a live version of the Haka. Was pretty terrifying as these rather bulky men was slapping their thighs with tongues sticking out and grimison facial expressions as eyes were enlarged to such an extent that they looked like they were going to pop out! Can totally see why the Maori's used the Haka to scare off enemies! There was also a great moment of 'audience participation' when we all tried to learn some Maori words which were then put into the 'Hokie-Cokie.' The only one I can remember, which I think nearly everyone else could as well (!) was that 'No, no' was the word for bum...and it was during this verse that the vocals and the laughs from the audience became much louder!

After the performance we went on a tour of the village with def. our best guide yet! Michael - our tour guide told us that about seventy Maori's still live in this village thats landscape is consumed by mud baths and thermal pools. We were shown their cooking facilities which simply comes from all these natural resources. There is no need for ovens or microwaves! For example, they could leave a frozen piece of meat on a sheet above the steam from a thermal pool, and in two and a half hrs it will be cooked. They also have designated vegetable pools, where they dip the food into the water and soon enough it is cooked. It takes ten dips of a piece of sweetcorn to cook in a well over hundred degree pool. They also don't require any shampoos/body washers as the natural minerals from the reserves just cleans yourself. Shows how cheap and simply life can really be! Michael also showed us a huge thermal pool that had caved in nearly six years ago on the 26th December 2004 - the same day as the Tsaunami. On this day as well, one of the thermal pools, known as the 'Prince of Feathers' spurted water out of its cracks higher than it has any other day due to pressure from underground. No scientific connection has been proven, but its interesting to note the correlation.

We left Rotorua yesterday and made our way to Lake Taupo, which is where we are residing for a few days. On the way here, we went through a place called Waitomo, which is reknowed for its glow-worms. Sooo...obv. we didn't want to miss out (!), and down into the caves we went and saw the worms. Absolutely incredible!! Can't tell you how magical they were! It was like stars sparkling all over the cave walls. There was a large area in the centre of the cave called 'The Cathedral.' This is because every Christmas, they hold a carol concert in the cave, which is simply lit by candles and the glow-worms. We were all thinking how amazing would that be! And as I said before we are now in Lake Taupo...I'm sure Sarah is going to write something about here, so I will leave that to her!